My First Yoga Class without a Drop of Water

As you know, Bikram yoga is done in a very hot room so, in each class, it is normal to sweat like crazy (2-3 liters of juicy sweat). To prevent deshydration, it is important to drink a lot of water and electrolytes before, during and after the class.

I follow this drinking guideline verbatim, so I drink these days 8-10 liters of water/electrolytes per day. In each yoga class, I drink 2-3 liters with no apparent effort, from any human position and situation. These amazing superpowers led Craig to give me the nickname of Aquaman (that was before Bikram called me Mr. Pregnant;-).

At one point, I noticed that my inmense love for water during the class was almost an addiction. Even during postures, I was thinking all the time about when my next water break was going to be. I deeply believed that I needed that huge amount of water during the class to survive the class.

Yesterday, Casper and Jeanne challenged me just before the evening class, to stay the 90 minutes of class without drinking any water at all. At first, I was as reluctant about it as a cocaine addict about getting into a detox hospital. However, they did a great job in convincing my highly rational and sophisticated masculine mind with the words: “don’t you have balls to do it or what?”. As a good man from the Basque Country, I have enough balls even to cut my balls if needed, so I accepted the water challenge.

I would lie if I said that I didn’t suffer during the class without water but I survived the whole class (taught by Bikram) without drinking. This showed me the big difference between NEED and WANT. I thought that I NEEDED the water to do the class but I DON’T NEED it at all. I just WANT it (with all my heart).

If in life, we were able to differentiate the cases when we really NEED something from the ones when we only WANT that something, we would be able to stop being slaves of our weak minds, increase our self-control and go through life much happier.

Said, I am freaking drinking the next class (but just because I want to 🙂

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Thoughts, Yoga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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